Steve Land

Monday, May 03, 2010

Turn off the navigation menus on a MojoPortal page

I needed to figure out how to turn off the navigation for the portal from my custom module. After some searching, I found code in Secure/Login.aspx.cs that did the trick.

The function to use is this:

SuppressAllMenus()

This function is part of MojoPortal.Web.mojoBasePage so pages that inherit from that will already have access to the function.

Share This Post:
Short Url: http://wblo.gs/aKO

Posted On Monday, May 03, 2010 2:32 PM | Feedback (0)

Friday, January 15, 2010

Quick Modules

If you saw my earlier post about creating a MojoPortal Module, you might have been daunted at the number of steps. This article outlines a simpler approach for simpler modules.

The earlier article followed Joe Audette's examples, and generally this is the correct approach in cases where you want a full feature added to the Web site.

Note: this article is for developers who already have set up their project to develop new custom code for mojoportal, and who already have a project similar to my earlier post. If this is true, and you want to add a new simple one-ascx-module to your portal, keep reading...

This approach is a quicker one and is for situations where the module you are creating is simple. For example, I wanted to add a single page (a la ASCX controls) to the portal and did not want this to be a starting point for many other aspx pages.

To create quick modules that contain all their functionality in a single control, I did the following:

Created a subfolder in my other web project that is setup a'la my earlier article called "QuickModules"
Inside this subfolder, created a new .ASCX User Control
in this User control, copied the guts from the mojoportal EmptyModule.ascx.cs file (found under Web/Modules/ ) into the code-behind file inside my new control. Salient points to watch:
- Your ascx must inherit SiteModuleControl
- You should copy the #region OnInit and all the methods (Page_Load, PopulateControls, PopulateLabels(), Loadsettings() ) into your new control's code behind
Once finished, update your projects' Build Events section (Post-build event command line:, for details see my earlier post) and add a line specifically for this new control. If the build events copy this directly into the MojoPortal /Modules/ folder, it can then be added as a Feature. For example, my entry looked like this (I added extra subfolders to keep my code very separated from the core code):

xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)QuickModules\*" "D:\projects\mojodev\Web\Modules\StrongEye\Catalog\QuickModules\"
Build and run your mojoportal so your new control gets copied.
Finally, in the mojoportal UI, go to Administration > Advanced Tools > feature installation/configuration. Choose "Add new feature" and in Control Source put the destination mojoportal path. In my case it was this:
Modules/StrongEye/Catalog/QuickModules/MyModuleUserControlName.ascx

That's it! It's a real time saver for those cases when you just need something fast and simple. Obviously, more elaborate features probably deserve their own projects, but I'm pretty happy with this for many scenarios.

Share This Post:
Short Url: http://wblo.gs/Zls

Posted On Friday, January 15, 2010 4:44 PM | Feedback (2)

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Bare bone layout.master for MojoPortal module development

The code below is a bare bone Layout.Master master page for MojoPortal. I found that the default ones all still had some dependencies on MojoPortal. Since I'm trying to develop most of my features outside the portal (quicker build times), I needed to have something without dependencies that would still help me get something approximating the MojoPortal environment.

<%@ Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="~/App_MasterPages/layout.Master.cs" %>

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

</head>

<body>

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" EnablePageMethods="true" runat="server" />

<asp:contentplaceholder ID="pageEditContent" runat="server" Visible="false"></asp:contentplaceholder> 

<asp:Panel id="divCenter" runat="server" visible="true" cssclass="center-nomargins" SkinID="pnlPlain">

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="mainContent" runat="server"></asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

</asp:Panel>

<asp:Panel id="divLeft" runat="server" cssclass="leftside" visible="True" SkinID="pnlPlain">

<asp:contentplaceholder ID="leftContent" runat="server"></asp:contentplaceholder>

</asp:Panel>

<asp:Panel id="divRight" runat="server" visible="true" cssclass="rightside" SkinID="pnlPlain">

<asp:contentplaceholder ID="rightContent" runat="server"></asp:contentplaceholder>

</asp:Panel>

</div>

</form>

</body>

</html>

Share This Post:
Short Url: http://wblo.gs/ZkK

Posted On Sunday, January 10, 2010 11:30 AM | Feedback (0)

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

MojoPortal starts up multiple Web servers in Visual Studio

When debugging, you might see that MojoPortal starts up many different ASP.NET Web servers, one for each Web project. Hidden in the readme README.VisualStudio.txt included with the SVN trunk is the workaround. Good to know!!

Additional info:

You may notice when debugging that multiple web servers are spawned. This is because there are multiple web applications in the solution as features are split into separate projects. All the files for features get copied up to the main mojoPortal.Web project ie Web folder by post build events, so the feature projects are not meant to be run directly, the mojoPortal.Web project must always be the startup project, though you can set breakpoints and debug any of the code in any of the projects, but the main web project always has to be the startup project. You can disable those extra web apps from launching a web server as described here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16363/how-do-you-configure-vs2008-to-only-open-one-webserver-in-a-solution-with-multi#16390

Just click the project node in Solution Explorer and then click the Properties tab on the right and you will see where to disable it. I have disabled them on my copy but it does not seem to persist those settings in the solution, they are apparently user specific.

Share This Post:
Short Url: http://wblo.gs/Zje

Posted On Wednesday, January 06, 2010 2:01 PM | Feedback (0)

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Configuration tasks for a new MojoPortal site

In this post, I'm going to list out the configuration tasks that are needed for any new MojoPortal installation. These tasks are listed elsewhere in documentation, but I haven't seen them listed all in one place yet, so here goes.
I'd like to keep this list up to date as possible, so if there is anything you see that I've missed or gotten wrong let me know and I'll update.

This list includes server-side configurations but stops at the point when you must use the admin UI to make additional changes to your portal.

Category	Steps	Notes
User.config file settings	In MojoPortal.Web, right click the project root and choose “Add” > “New Item”. Choose “Web Configuration File” and rename the new file “user.config”. Under <appSettings> I add the following keys, your requirements may mean you could need a slightly different list of keys than this. See the Web.config master to see what keys are available. <add key="MSSQLConnectionString" value="…" /> <add key="SMTPServer" value="localhost" /> <add key="SMTPRequiresAuthentication" value="false" /> <add key="SMTPUseSsl" value="false" /> <add key="SMTPPort" value="25" /> <add key="SMTPUser" value="UserName" /> <add key="SMTPPassword" value="UPassword" /> <add key="SMTPTimeoutInMilliseconds" value="30000" /> <add key="PreferredGreenwichMeantimeOffset" value="-5.00" /> <add key="mojoProfileConfigFileName" value="mojoProfile.config" /> (see next item) <add key="SilverlightClientKey" value="mojoProfile.config" /> Below are changes that I think are pretty specific to my requirements that I have added to my user.config: <add key="UseRelatedSiteMode" value="false" /> <add key="ShowForumPostsInMemberList" value="true" />	This new “user.config” file will have all your default appSetting override values. See http://www.mojoportal.com/webconfig.aspx for details.
Web.config changes	Update this section (near the end of the web.config file): <system.net><mailSettings><smtp>… Settings as appropriate.	Note that upgrades may overwrite these settings since they are in your web.config. Keep a backup handy!
Edit mojoProfile.config	Remove default profile settings that you don’t want, add ones you want. To avoid having your changes overwritten, you can change the appSettings key “mojoProfileConfigFileName” to something else, copy the original file, and edit the copy under a new name. I use this name: CustomMojoProfile.config	See http://www.mojoportal.com/userprofileconfiguration.aspx for details about how to configure this
Change permissions for Data folder	ASPNET user (IIS_WPG and NetworkService on Windows 2003) must have write permission to the Data folder beneath the root of the Web. These permissions must be applied to all child objects, too.	Mostly this is used for logging, I believe.
Content changes	Many opportunities for changing content under mojoPortal.Web/Data/ much of this is localized boilerplate content specific to the portal itself.
Registration agreement	If you want to have a custom registration agreement displayed when users register with your site, you need to create a new content file.	See http://www.mojoportal.com/creatingaregistrationagreement.aspx for details
Global images	Global images are under mojoPortal.Web/Data/SiteImages
Favicon.ico	If you want to change this, replace in in the /Data/skins/ subdirectories as appropriate.
Multi-site installations	If you are upgrading, be sure to remove this file after installing: /Setup/initialcontent/pages/00001homepage.config	See note at the end of this post http://www.mojoportal.com/configuring-initial-content.aspx

Important keys to change for security purposes

Keys that should be changed in new installations for security (for additional info on security, see http://www.mojoportal.com/security.aspx)

appSettings key	Instructions	Notes
SilverlightClientKey	Regererate a new GUID	Under appSettings, so this replacement can be in “user.config” From web.config comments: SilverlightClientKey is a token used to identify the silverlight app to the server, for logging and other purposes. We don't want other people's copy of the app to be able to log to our server. Best to generate your own new guid and put it in user.config
Any keys containing “PaymentGatewayUseTestMode”	Set to “false” in production!
machineKey	This is important for security, you should generate a new one and update <system.web><machineKey validationKey=”…” /> To this new value.	Note: you should save the new value elsewhere because once you encrypt something using your custom machineKey, if you change it you will not be able to decrypt again. Also, because this is not external to the mojoportal web.config file, it may be overwritten, so very important to (securely) keep a 2^nd copy! From the Web.config comments: To generate your own, you can use this nice online utility: http://www.aspnetresources.com/tools/keycreator.aspx or this newer one which is more up to date as of 1/4/2007: http://www.developmentnow.com/articles/machinekey_generator.aspx

Addendum:

I found some error log messages like this:

2010-01-12 10:00:56,315 ERROR mojoPortal.Web.Global - 208.176.36.131-en-US - /HtmlEdit.aspx?mid=4&pageid=12
System.InvalidOperationException: Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1).
error CS2001: Source file 'C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\kn3fdlma.0.cs' could not be found
error CS2008: No inputs specified

To fix, I am assigning read/write privileges to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP for ASPNET user. If anyone knows if this is not necessary or has other solutions, feedback would be appreciated.

Share This Post:
Short Url: http://wblo.gs/ZeD

Posted On Thursday, December 17, 2009 12:38 PM | Feedback (0)

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Creating a MojoPortal module

MojoPortal is an open-source content management platform that we have started using at StrongEye because it offers an extensive out of the box starting point for ASP.NET Web applications, and also because it is incredibly developer-friendly.

UPDATE: For most common Web site tasks, you probably can go very far in MojoPortal without having to create custom code. These steps are advanced and for developers who want to create new functionality that cannot be accomplished with the existing feature set that comes out-of-the-box with MojoPortal.

One of the first tasks that a developer needs to do to get started with MojoPortal is to create a module. Basically a module is a starting point for a 100% custom application. The module is the shim that plugs in to MojoPortal proper, and allows you to include a entry point to your application in context of the portal.

I have found the documentation to be great on the MojoPortal site, but there are lots of small details that are hidden inside tutorial videos and elsewhere. This post is an attempt to bring all these things into one place so you can get started.

UPDATE: This post is updated to include a bit more context than before. Before you begin step 1, you must first have a local copy of MojoPortal loaded from SVN per instructions here (note: this links to Windows instructions as that is my bias, Linux SVN instructions are here).

Once you have all the Mojoportal source code loaded locally, you need to set up you VS Solution. The simplest way to do this is to copy an existing .sln file from the code you just got from SVN and rename it so that it will not be overwritten when you do new updates from SVN to get newer versions in the future.

For the purpose of this entry, I am going to make a copy of "mojoportal_mssql_only.sln" and I'll rename it 'mojoportal-localdev_mssql_only.sln'. Then I'll open this file in Visual Studio. Getting the initial project to run locally is beyond the scope of this article, though this is something that you must have working before any of the steps below will work.

How to create a MojoPortal module

Step 1: Create the 3 initial projects

Category	Steps	Notes
Create UI project	Create a new ASP.NET Web Application [yourProject].UI Delete or rename the auto-generated Default.aspx file so it does not get copied to the portal by mistake. Create subfolders in your Web project for your controls and asp.net pages: /[yourProject]/ /[yourProject]/Controls/ Create a subfolder from the root of your Web project called "Setup: /Setup/	NOTE: don't create a new Web Site; what we want is a new Web Application. Right click Solution root > Add > New Project > ASP.NET Web Application Creating contents inside "Setup" is outside the scope of this article. See the developer documentation here for details on how to use the Setup system.
Create Business Layer project	Create a new Class Library project [yourProject].Business
Create Data Layer project	Create a new Class Library project [yourProject].Data Rename your .Data project to [yourProject].Data.MSSQL (or whatever db you are using). By naming it .Data initially, Visual Studio sets the target assembly name to .Data, renaming the project does not cause this to change, which is the desired behavior.	All the .Data projects that are variants targeting different database technologies should all compile to the same assembly name so they can be swapped at build time.
Add References in your Web UI project	· Log4net · mojoPortal.Business · mojoPortal.Business.WebHelpers · mojoPortal.Features.UI · mojoPortal.Net · mojoPortal.Web · mojoPortal.Web.Controls · mojoPortal.Web.Editor · mojoPortal.Web.Framework · [yourProject].Business
Add Reference in your [yourProject].Business project	· [yourProject].Data.MSSQL
Add .resx file for localization	Create a standard ASP.NET folder App_GlobalResources. In this folder, add a new .resx file by choosing Add > New Item > Resources file. Give the file a name matching your project name so that it is unique.

Step 2: Make your project mimic mojoPortal.Web enough that it will compile

Category

Steps

Notes

Update Web.Config

Open the Web.config file in mojoPortal.Web and copy the entire <pages> section in to your new [myProject].UI web.config

This section (<pages>) lives directly under <system.web> … your project may have an auto-generated section already. You can just overwrite the entire thing.

Copy Master Pages

Create a folder in your [myProject].UI project called “App_MasterPages”

Copy layout.Master from the WebStore.UI subfolder (this is preferable because it is a subset of the entire master page and it’s all that you need to develop). You can also simply copy the entire “App_MasterPages” folder from WebStore.UI (NOTE: NOT mojoPortal.Web! Important to use the folder from WebStore.UI instead!)

This gives your aspx pages the correct content placeholders when you develop your feature.

Step 3: Create your Module

The Module is an .ascx control that inherits from SiteModuleControl and creates the instance-specific entry point from the portal into your custom code. From this entry point, you may also have many other pages that are custom aspx pages that use the portal master page.

These steps rely on code generated by CodeSmith, which provides a free version on their site (here)

Category	Steps	Notes
Create Module ascx	In the folder created earlier in [yourProject].UI /[yourProject]/ Right click and create a new Web User Control (.ascx) called [yourProject]Module.ascx
Generate ascx from CodeSmith template	Open CodeSmith Studio. In Template Explorer, open the folder “Codesmith4x” found in \mojoportal\CodeSmith Templates\ Find the template called Mp_UI-starter_ModuleControlGenerator.cst Right click and choose “Execute” A dialog will open prompting you for values. Here is what to choose: Author: [your name] BusinessLayerNameSpace: [yourProject].Business ControlName: [yourModuleControlName] FeatureName: [yourProject] UINameSpace: [yourProject].UI Click “Generate”	The result of the generated code includes both control UI code and code-behind c# code. You will need to highlight each section separately to cut and paste.
Cut and paste back into your Module	Select the code beginning with comments // Author: [yourname] To the end. This is the code behind that goes in [yourModule]Module.ascx.cs Open [yourModule]Module.ascx.cs and replace all the code with the copied code. Save. Return to the generated Codesmith resulting code. In the .ascx source section, highlight ONLY the single line beginning with <%@ Control … %> Copy that and paste over the Source in your [yourModule]Module.ascx file. Save. Copy the remaining code between <%@ Control … %> and the code behind c# code comments from CodeSmith into your ascx source. Save.	The sequence and steps are designed here to work around a Visual Studio problem in which the “TitleControl” is not found. If you simply copy and paste everything all at once instead of following these steps, you may see the error: “The name ‘TitleControl’ does not exist in the current context” even though the control is there. As long as these conditions are true, you should not see that message: - You have the proper MojoPortal references set - You have updated the <pages> section in Web.config - You copy and paste the CodeSmith output in the correct sequence and Save in between steps.

Step 3: Add post-build logic to your Web project

This step integrates your code with mojoPortal with each successful build, so you can run the code and see it in context.

Category	Steps	Notes
Open the Properties of your .UI project	Right click on [yourProject].UI in Visual Studio Solution Explorer, choose “Properties”. Navigate to the Build Events tab.
Add Post-build event command line instructions to your .UI project	The purpose of this section is so that your code from your UI project will be automatically copied into the mojoportal project with each build. If you haven't used these, $(ProjectDir) and $(SolutionDir) are macros that Visual Studio recognizes. For more info about post-build events,see this article. Copy the commands below into the text box labeled “Post-build event command line:” and replace XXX with your project path names and YYY with your project names: xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)bin\YYY.UI.dll" "$(SolutionDir)Web\bin\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)bin\YYY.Business.dll" "$(SolutionDir)Web\bin\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)bin\YYY.Data.dll" "$(SolutionDir)Web\bin\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)XXX\.ashx" "$(SolutionDir)Web\XXX\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)XXX\.ascx" "$(SolutionDir)Web\XXX\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)XXX\.aspx" "$(SolutionDir)Web\XXX\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)XXX\Controls\.ascx" "$(SolutionDir)Web\XXX\Controls\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)App_GlobalResources\.resx" "$(SolutionDir)Web\App_GlobalResources\" xcopy /s /y "$(ProjectDir)Setup\" "$(SolutionDir)Web\Setup" Save after you have replaced the paths, right click your Web project and choose Properties. In the Build Events tab, click the Edit Post-build… button and you can paste this there.
Install your feature using the MojoPortal Administration tools	After you build your project, log in to MojoPortal as Administrator and navigate to this location: Administration > Advanced Tools > Feature Installation / Configuration You will see a list of all installed features, scroll down and click Add New Feature. On the new page, enter your module entry point path in Control Source. You may also choose resource files, icons, and other options here. Click Update. You may now add your new feature to a page.

After the steps above are completed, with my project, here is my solution structure in Visual Studio:

project structure

Share This Post:
Short Url: http://wblo.gs/Zdx

Posted On Wednesday, December 16, 2009 3:32 PM | Feedback (20)